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It may just be me, but STO has been very unreliable for me today and I've had trouble connecting to the servers. Nothing else has given me such Internet trouble.

Simon_Jester wrote:It may just be me, but STO has been very unreliable for me today and I've had trouble connecting to the servers. Nothing else has given me such Internet trouble.

There are some issues with an ISP node in the Boston area, which is affecting a number of users on all of PWE's games (not just STO).

Well we find out that the mirror Universe actually did defeat the Iconians. Wonder how they did it.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star- ... il/9527023

Begin personal Log, Admiral Leeta of the Terran Empire warship Fortuna.

The Empire has won the grand battle and the galaxy is ours. The future reached back as we in the present stretched forth our hands to receive the instruments of our dominance. We slew the demons. Crowned in victory, we wield weapons ahead of their time and stand upon the corpse of the Iconian Conclave. All others bow before the might of the Terran Empire. Now it is time for the Empire to extend its reach beyond the veil.

I shall be the one to seize the glory. I shall be the one to seize the power. I will take my stronghold across and lay waste to those who oppose me. I have spilled the blood and the text has been revealed to me. Doubt has been burned away. The way is clear and I am worthy.

Their universe is within my grasp and I will take it.

End recording.

Counterpoint will be our new 5-person cross-faction space queue. It is designed for level 60 players with normal, advanced and elite versions.

So the Terran Empire somehow gets weapons from the future to beat the Iconians. Also Mirror Leeta seems to have opened some Pah Wraith book.

https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star- ... il/9539173

The Iconians have been a constant threat in Star Trek Online for over five years, and we’ve been in open war with them for nearly 6 months.
The alliance has enjoyed minor victories and suffered major defeats, but they now have a technological advantage they are scrambling to bring into the field.
With their backs against the wall and the temporal prime directive in mind, the alliance is poised to make an unthinkable decision.
These are dark times filled with tough choices and personal sacrifice, the future can be bright again but it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Star Trek Online is proud to present the finale to the Iconian War: Midnight.

Hmm, wonder how we win this.

Reading this I get the feeling that the next war will be fought against the empire.

So next weekend we've unlocked ALL the bonuses: XP, Dilithium and Marks. And I believe the R&D Weekend is still slotted.

So...grind the ever-loving shit out of STO starting Thursday. lol

What episodes do you guys play to grind. Most of my XP is from doing DOFF quests. I do occasionally replay some Cardassian and Breen episodes. Mainly because they are relatively easy for a level 60 character to pass and do it quickly.

I've heard the Argala and Garren patrols (the latter is 58+ but you said you're 60 so that's not an issue) in the DQ are pretty much the preferred way to grind XP. And last Bonus XP event I remember seeing a ton of people parked outside Argala.

only problem with Argala (well all DQ pats I think) is that they have 30 min cooldown so it'll take alot of time to get anything meaningful out of them, that combinied with the leveling gap in Delta Quadrant (there's parts in the storyline where you must grind alot to get the next mission) make Delta Rising seem a bit meh, for all it's faults (which there are plenty) WoW:WoD didn't have parts where your progress hit a brickwall until you did mindless boring grind to get to the next level (oh and that grind was constantly being nerfed so that it would be more obvious and boring).

Tht said I wonder what the rewards for the next FE are and also how will they work out the end of the Iconian War (I really hope it's not tempolar reset button or something similar).

Decent ending to the Iconian war I guess. Although in some ways it felt like a ST episode, but unsatisfying, sort of like those TOS novels where the Enterprise doesn't win because of superior tech/tactics etc, but because you convince the bad guys to leave them alone. If only they gave us two endings, the canon one which we see, and one where we get to kill the Iconians.

mr friendly guy wrote:Decent ending to the Iconian war I guess. Although in some ways it felt like a ST episode, but unsatisfying, sort of like those TOS novels where the Enterprise doesn't win because of superior tech/tactics etc, but because you convince the bad guys to leave them alone. If only they gave us two endings, the canon one which we see, and one where we get to kill the Iconians.

tbh that was the only way it could really end.

sure the twist that Spoiler is predictble and maybe somewhat unsatisfying but realistically killing the Iconians in the past was never an option, problem was that as this unstopble juggernaught there was never any conventional way you could end the Iconian war.

So basically it was the same story as with the Dominion in DS9? They created a threat so great and unstoppable that there was no logical way for the "good guys" to win and thus the actual win feels unsatisfying and forced?

Purple wrote:So basically it was the same story as with the Dominion in DS9? They created a threat so great and unstoppable that there was no logical way for the "good guys" to win and thus the actual win feels unsatisfying and forced?

Not quite. The Dominion war was more like "we would have won but the cost would be really high if we didn't use deus ex machina." Recall that the Dominion had been beaten back and analysis of the final assault would be that the allies would win but at great cost. It is partially satisfying because it manages to address the need for a conventional (ie not deus ex machina) victory. I am aware that some deus ex machina was used along the way in previous episodes, but at the final episode, the allies had militarily driven the Dominion back to Cardassia. It was also not unreasonable that the Cardassians turned, which ameliorated somewhat the fact "we didn't do it by ourselves."

This was more like, we would have lost if it wasn't for deus ex machina. The funny thing is, we had a better chance of comprehensively defeating the Iconians than Sisko had to defeat the Dominion thanks to time travel, Krenim time destroyer etc. But Cryptic didn't give us the option of taking it.

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Next we see the Terran empire defeat the Iconians, which sounds like someone from the future travelled back into the past and gave them advance technology to allow them to defeat the Iconians.

And had we wiped out the Iconians in the past, pretty much the entire plot of the game would have changed. They would've had to pull a WoW-Cata on us, essentially.

In short: it was never going to happen, no matter how much you wish it so.

RogueIce wrote:And had we wiped out the Iconians in the past, pretty much the entire plot of the game would have changed. They would've had to pull a WoW-Cata on us, essentially.

In short: it was never going to happen, no matter how much you wish it so.

oh it's worst then that since the Elachi are seen in ENT it means the iconians post-Iconia influence extends to at least the 2150s so there isn't really any realistic way they have killed of the Iconians in the past and still had STO as semi recognizeble follow up to the prime-verse.

RogueIce wrote:And had we wiped out the Iconians in the past, pretty much the entire plot of the game would have changed. They would've had to pull a WoW-Cata on us, essentially.

In short: it was never going to happen, no matter how much you wish it so.

I believe my solution of having the current version of events as canon and another option as alternate would have satisfied both camps. Then you can give accolades for choosing either side, like how you can choose to side with Franklin in that section 31 quest or against him. I mean fighting games do this all the time, have an ending story where character x (the one the player chooses) beats boss character y, but the canon story is only a specific character defeated the boss character. Mortal Kombat is well known for this.

mr friendly guy wrote:

RogueIce wrote:And had we wiped out the Iconians in the past, pretty much the entire plot of the game would have changed. They would've had to pull a WoW-Cata on us, essentially.

In short: it was never going to happen, no matter how much you wish it so.

I believe my solution of having the current version of events as canon and another option as alternate would have satisfied both camps. Then you can give accolades for choosing either side, like how you can choose to side with Franklin in that section 31 quest or against him. I mean fighting games do this all the time, have an ending story where character x (the one the player chooses) beats boss character y, but the canon story is only a specific character defeated the boss character. Mortal Kombat is well known for this.

true but that Franklin mission also had no impact on the overall story no matter which way you chose, where as the choice in Midnight has major story impact and it would feel even more unsatisfying if 1 choice didn't seem to do anything, it's better to not give the choice at all in that case.

It would be like if Orcish players (as in players who play orcs) would have been given a choice to side with Garrosh Hellscream in SoO the impact to the overall story is so huge that you can't just dismiss as "optional non-canon choice"

In Mortal Kombat storywise it doesn't matter who wins the tournament in the end.

What's the deal between heavy dual cannons and dual cannons? I know there is the more wider firing arc vs damage, but does the narrower arc really affect your ship provided you have a manouvrable ship. Currently testing out a Jem'hadar strike ship at Tier 6. Armed it with both types of cannons, a neutronic torpedo (mark 14) and some mark 12 beams. I really can't tell whether there is a difference.

Generally I find my front on attack (let her rip with torps and cannons) hurts them, but they survive. I have to rely on my speed to avoid while using beams to weaken them until I can position myself for another frontal attack.

Its more fun than my standard configuration because I am less suited to survivability so I have to rely on summoning help and healing more often. Eventually I am going to double the number of tactical consoles I have which boost polaron weaponry to see if I can kill them much faster.

Honestly if your ship can equip dual heavy cannons and you have enough of those with same energy type to fill all weapon slots you need you should never mix heavy and normal cannons, honestly normal cannons are meant for ships that cannot mount heavy cannons, also I wouldn't mix beams and cannons if I could avoid it.

mr friendly guy wrote:What's the deal between heavy dual cannons and dual cannons? I know there is the more wider firing arc vs damage, but does the narrower arc really affect your ship provided you have a manouvrable ship.

Are you confusing Dual Cannons with Dual Beam Banks? Because Dual Cannons have the same firing arc.

Anyway, from the Wiki: "Dual Heavy Cannons have the same firing arc (45°) and DPS as Dual Cannons, but have a slower firing rate, do more damage per individual volley and have an innate +10% critical severity bonus. This bonus is in addition to any additional critical severity modifiers. Not all starships can equip dual heavy cannons."

So there you go. Have a year-old STObuilds discussion on the topic. But basically the main difference seems to be that DHCs are good for an all-out alpha strike (so if you're, say, coming out of cloak and have a Tac Captain who can fire off APA and all the other Tac goodies) but otherwise they generally seem to even out.

mr friendly guy wrote:Currently testing out a Jem'hadar strike ship at Tier 6. Armed it with both types of cannons, a neutronic torpedo (mark 14) and some mark 12 beams. I really can't tell whether there is a difference.

As Lord_Revan said, ditch the beams and get some turrets. Unless they're Omni-Directional (and the KCB) in which case they're probably worth it, since they can fire head-on as well as your DHCs.

Oops. I did get them confuse. Since I am going with dual cannons, I may as well get the heavy builds when another one drops. Currently I don't have enough research skill in cannons to create a good one.

I have a turret, but I am pretty sure it only allows me to equip one polaron turrent. So I put it on the back as to add an extra strike when I approach from the front. Perhaps I can use a borg turret for kinetic damage, although it doesn't boost with polaron modulators.

mr friendly guy wrote:Oops. I did get them confuse. Since I am going with dual cannons, I may as well get the heavy builds when another one drops. Currently I don't have enough research skill in cannons to create a good one.

I have a turret, but I am pretty sure it only allows me to equip one polaron turrent. So I put it on the back as to add an extra strike when I approach from the front. Perhaps I can use a borg turret for kinetic damage, although it doesn't boost with polaron modulators.

unless said Polaron turret is a special unique equip one you can in theory fill your weapon slots with nothing but polaron turrets (I'n practice that's not viable as turrets aren't strong enough to be main weapons on starships), if it's just a regular old Polaron Turret you can equip as many as you need of those.

oh and if you got alot of spare update items and Dil to spare someting you can do is make a Mark II weapon with the stats you want and then upgrade it to the mark you want it to be (up to about mark X or so it's quite cheap too), that's what I did for my Delta Recruit char (it was plasma weapons in her case but still).

EDIT:if you use the Kinetic cutting beam also use the Adapted Borg Console as those give 2 piece set bonus that boosts your weapon damage.

Get both the assimilated console and the kinetic cutting beam and don't take them off. Ever.

There is not a build in STO where those two items are not utilized because they are that good.

Coaan wrote:Get both the assimilated console and the kinetic cutting beam and don't take them off. Ever.

There is not a build in STO where those two items are not utilized because they are that good.

This not only are those items good in an of themselves but the Omega Weapon Amplifier bonus is one of the best weapon buffs in the game.